News

An informative and entertaining interview with Tom Waits just appeared in the New York Times. The piece features Tom and the writer driving around in Tom’s car littered with “a yellowing newspaper announcing the inauguration of John F. Kennedy, a large bottle of Valencia Mexican hot sauce and a bowler hat and a glittery sequined jacket” as they talk about Tom’s amazing new album Bad As Me. Some sample bits below…
“Talking about the album now ‘is like doing the dishes,” he said. “The meal has already been prepared and eaten. We enjoyed it. But after every meal, clang, clack, clang, scrape, clang, clang, clack, scrape — you’ve got to do the dishes.’ Compared with “Real Gone,” an album full of songs that clanged, scraped and bristled with distortion and cryptic lyrics, “Bad as Me” climbs off the ledge. “There’s less phlegm and there’s less smoke in the room.”
“Mr. Waits was seeking to write, he said, “dwell-in songs,” a phrase used by a woman he learned about in a collection of folk songs from Alabama. “Like a blues, you get down there and you start dwelling on a particular topic,” he said. “I was really taken with that, that it was something simple and it evoked so much.”
You can read to entire article here.